Here’s the truth:
“Girls reported magazines as their primary source of information regarding diet and health.”
Unfortunately, magazines are an excessively unfair representation of the actual female body. Airbrushed, reshaped, and digitally reduced, there’s nothing but unrealistic expectation left for the readers.
Here’s the results:
“A majority of girls in a 1999 study (59 percent) reported dissatisfaction with their body shape, and 66 percent expressed a desire to lose weight. Only 29 percent of the girls were overweight.”
“At age thirteen, 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.”
An airbrushed picture has lost of the beauty of its reality. It shows no facial lines of emotion, no scars of surviving, no meals enjoyed, no children born. It reveals no stories or strength.
Enjoy the reality of your body, or in the far more eloquent words of John Keats:
| ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all | |
| Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ |
Feed me fashionably fresh
Thanks Raechel. I think every girl needs to see that.
I hate feeling so susceptible to the whims of photographs–which I know don’t represent reality!–but I am. I compare myself to a picture and fall short every time. Although I know in my head that these pictures are not real, I still act as though they are. Thank you so much for the reminder–perhaps I just need to be hit upside the head with these choice tidbits every single week.
Wow, photoshop is so deceiving. We all know it happens but not quite how bad it really is. I wish these celebs would tell the editors to cut it out. How embarrassing 😛
I LOVE Kate Winslet’s body. I think she has such a feminine shape…without photoshop.
Thank you!
Thank you! This post made me feel better about myself today…I totally fit in the statistic of a 13 year-old having a skewed body image perception…and it only got worse. At 33 I think I finally like my body…and I’ve even had a baby.
Thank you for this post. One of my best friends is a makeup artist for a modeling agency in Manhattan and she is always giving me the inside scoop. It takes a literal village to get these girls ready for a shoot, and even after that they airbrush them into something artificial.
I have three girls and I never want them to stress about their body image. For that reason, I work hard to have a good outlook about my own, which I hope will influence them.
I think we’ve come a long way from the pencil-stick-skinny models of the 80s (at least there are some curves out there now) but we still have a long way to go.
Thanks again. This was an awesome post
dito! no body issues here. love it!
Thank you so much helping to remind the world what reality and normal and healthy really are! I am a doctoral student in media studies and I have devoted many years – and plan a future devoted to – helping girls and women understand that a profit-driven, multi-billion dollar beauty and diet industry never has their best interests in my mind. They contribute to a skewed representation of what beautiful, normal, and healthy really look like across most every bit of media we see. If you want to read more on this subject, my facebook group “beauty redefined” has plenty of links to uplifting stories in media, what reality looks like in media, etc. My web site with more in-depth information on how we can work together to recognize and reject harmful media messages and get on to what is more important is also linked on the facebook group. Again, thank you for sharing this great reminder!
thank you for posting this! i think most of us know about the reality of those photos how they are so edited..but it’s a good reminder to see the before and afters..
i wish we could see more of the unphotoshopped images. it always makes me feel better. i want reality, not airbrushed fantasy. there is no way we can live up to the fake ideal.
I totally forget about Photoshop when I look at pics. Thanks for the reality check.